RETURN TO GREAT MOTHER’S INFINITY

For his exhibition, Return to Great Mother’s Infinity artist, writer, and educator Jovencio de la Paz will organize weavers in Maine and Oregon to make a site specific textile collection for SPACE Gallery. These hand-woven blankets will interact with the gallery and the guests of Space Gallery in a variety of ways: as wall-based, contemplative installation, as painterly tapestry, and also as functional lending library of blankets to be used for visitors’ comfort during the venue’s various programming. The project will culminate in a publication documenting each of the submitted blankets, as well as a short biography of every participating weaver.

The act of hand-weaving is a metaphor for intersection, the gathering together of many discrete threads to become a singular and harmonious plane. SPACE Gallery also brings individuals together, and the work reflects the mission of the gallery in this particular way. This project celebrates the craftsmanship and ingenuity of hand-weavers from coast to coast and hopes to surprise visitors with the unexpected act of sharing warmth, comfort, and a more intimate experience with a work of art.

The gesture of placing a blanket on the floor is one of hospitality and of community, performed the world over.

Jovencio de la Paz is an artist and writer working with textile and fiber processes. His current work seeks out the material history of colors as a platform from which to view decoration, ornament, and form as inexorably linked to expansive histories of colonialism, globalization, and immigration.

Jovencio was born in Singapore, and became a citizen of the United States in 1994. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008, and an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Department of Fiber, in 2012. He has exhibited work at ThreeWalls, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR; The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH; SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA; Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago; The Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; MessHall, Chicago; Uri Gallery, Seoul, South Korea, among others. He regularly teaches at schools of art, craft, and design throughout the country, including the Ox Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI and the Arrowmont School of Craft in Tennessee. He is also a co-founder of the collaborative group Craft Mystery Cult, established in 2010. He currently teaches at the University of Oregon.